Paradigm
by boxerboo
Summary: Kim Gideon is the 'next one' it seems. New companion, new Doctor, new Tardis. On the planet Skasis a prophecy is fulfilled. A sequel to my story 'The Word.' COMPLETE in 5 chapters.
1. The Dancing Walls

PARADIGM – CHAPTER ONE: _THE DANCING WALLS_

Dislocation.

That was the word.

Kim Gideon felt that she was slightly out-of-body. Off-centre. There was just too much going on for her senses to take in.

She was standing in a massive room. It must have been at least ten times the size of the Thamesford Library car park she had just left. A great cavernous space, the walls rising steeply to meet high above her. It was well lit with a slightly bluish hue, but she couldn't see any evidence of a light source. No spotlights, panels, nothing.

The centre of the room was dominated by a huge, chrome torus, floating a few feet above the floor. It's upper surface was segmented and covered with levers, buttons and switches. There was a gap in one side of the structure to allow access. In the centre of the torus stood the Doctor, talking to her.

Or rather at her. Some of the words filtered through her shock, but they had no meaning.

_Time And Relative Dimension In Space...dimensionally transcendental...disguised as an old police box because I like it that way...go anywhere, anytime..._

She filed them away for later consideration as her unblinking eyes scanned around her.

The walls were covered with raised geometric shapes. Circles, squares, triangles, hexagons. Kim could make out no discernible pattern. They seemed to be distributed at random. On three sides she noticed open archways with corridors leading off. The fourth wall was the one behind her, with the open door back to the car park.

_Those other Doctors you met...all me...aspects of me...I'm number twelve....the Tardis will translate for you..._

Dotted around the room were what she could only imagine to be ornamental shapes, rising from the floor. Gleaming chrome pipes that entwined to form abstract art.

She was suddenly aware that the background drone of the Doctor's voice had stopped.

He was leaning back on the central torus which did not budge from its hovering position.

He seemed to be waiting for something.

"What is it?" asked Kim, uncomfortable under his steady gaze.

"I'm just waiting for realisation to set in."

Words echoed in Kim's head, flooding up from her subconscious with a sudden rush.

_Go anywhere...anytime...I'm the twelfth....Tardis...Time And Relative..._

Kim gasped. Her vision swam. A single tear trickled down her cheek.

"There it is," said the Doctor, gently. "Don't fight it. Let it come."

Kim began to tremble. "Why me? Of all the people in the world, billions..."

"I saw the thread, Kim. You are the next. No doubt about it."

Kim was afraid. Afraid that this was a dream and she was going to wake up alone in the big old house with all its creaks and groans and fading hopes. From deep inside her the frightened child had its say. "But I can't... I'm too _normal_ for all this. I'm ugly and fat."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Who told you that?"

"Jimmy Knapp."

"A friend of yours?"

Kim shook her head. "A kid back at school. I have no friends"

The Doctor whistled low. "And you've carried that around on your shoulders all this time? Tell me, where exactly, is this Jimmy Knapp now? Do you know?"

"The last I heard he was sleeping rough in Hammersmith."

"And where, exactly, is Kim Gideon right now?" His voiced lowered, became intense. " I'll tell you. You're on the threshold. The threshold of something wonderful. I saw it. Your destiny. And as for friends, well, I've always said its the quality that counts, not the quantity. You've got a friend now."

When he spoke to her like that...

The Doctor reached over and pressed a control off to his left. Kim started as the door behind her folded in on itself, closing off the entrance seamlessly.

"Where do you want to go?"

"I'm scared."

"Don't be. Just choose. Anywhere. Anytime."

It sounded nonsense of course. The ravings of a nutjob. But she was standing inside proof positive. She believed his every word.

"I don't know...the moon and back?" She smiled at the ludicrous words.

"Look out, you'll be relaxing if you're not careful," said the Doctor with a grin. " Let's be a bit more ambitious. Somewhere we can breath the air and walk free." He crooked a finger and Kim joined him in the centre of the torus.

His hands worked a few buttons and a holographic star field sprang into existence, surrounding them like a canopy.

"Just the local group for now. Choose a star at random and we'll go take a look."

"Shouldn't you be taking that back first?" Kim pointed to the book resting on the surface of the console. The thing that had led to all this...

"Naw. The Skape can wait a bit longer. This is just a short detour. Go ahead. Choose."

Kim stabbed a random finger at a dull looking star just above her eye-line. In a blink the holographic canopy vanished. Around them the room began to throb with power, the lighting pulsed faintly.

"Course laid in. If it has any suitable planets I'm sure the Tardis will find us one."

The Doctor indicated a small but prominent lever amongst the myriad controls surrounding them both. "That one will send us on our way." He pointed to another control on the opposite side of the torus. "And that one will open the door back out into the car park. It's up to you."

She didn't want the choice. "But...you said it was my destiny!"

"You can still write your own future, Kim. There are always various pathways. I know what I saw but... "

Kim looked him in the eyes as she slammed the lever over.

The floor of the room began to vibrate. Faintly at first, but rising to a crescendo came a sound the like of which Kim had never heard. The closest she could get was a mad chorus of clattering rotary lawn mowers. Her chest-bone vibrated with the bass roar of it. Kim noticed that the geometric shapes on the walls seemed to pump in conjunction with the rising din, moving in and out of the walls in time to its rhythm.

Kim found herself holding onto the Doctor's arm, braced against... who knows what?

The deafening noise faded to be replaced by a smooth hum.

The Doctor gently disentangled Kim's hand and scanned the controls. "Nice take off," he remarked. " You OK?"

"What is it with those shapes on the walls?"

" Spatio-temporal coordinates. A kind of navigation system I've been experimenting with. Promising results, so far."

Kim was fascinated. She walked over to one of the walls for a closer look. The shapes seemed to be changing as she looked at them. Morphing. A circle would become a square; a square became a circle; a triangle changed into a hexagon and then back again. All the symbols seemed to be doing it.

According to the Doctor this was some kind of Sat-Nav. But there must be literally billions upon billions of possible shape combinations. What kind of man could make sense of it all?

She turned back to look at the Doctor, still standing in the central torus, flicking a switch here, pushing a button there.

He looked normal enough. Baggy 'Choose Life!' T-shirt (funny – Kim was sure it had read 'I-HEART-NY' before), corduroy trousers and hiking boots. His duffle-coat, with its egg-timer badge, was hanging carelessly from one of the tubular shapes adjacent to the torus. He didn't look like he had a brain the size of a planet but there again, the police box outside didn't look like it could contain all this!

Questions flooded her mind but she shelved them for later, so that she could just live in the moment.

Around her the walls positively danced.

.

Under an indigo sky of overlapping moons and smoky stars, the Childseer squatted, staring down intently into the small pool of quicksilver between his feet. Around him his acolytes were motionless, hardly breathing.

At length the Childseer looked up from the quicksilver pool and met the eyes of those around him.

"She is coming," he said.

(End of Chapter One)


	2. The Crowded Sky

PARADIGM - CHAPTER TWO: _THE CROWDED SKY_

"_Mommy."_

"_Yes, my baby?"_

" _When I grow up what will I be? "_

"_You will always be Mommy's little boy, my darling."_

"_I can see all these things, Mommy, but not what I will become."_

"_That is the proper way of things."_

"_Will I become God, Mommy?"_

"_Perhaps."_

_._

Kim was sitting on a comfortable sofa that had previously been just an abstract chrome structure of entwined tubes. The Doctor had touched a switch and it had suddenly transformed itself, flowing effortlessly into its new shape.

"I'm sorry, " the Doctor had apologised. "I've not long had a revamp in here. Haven't got all the creature comforts sorted out yet."

Off to her left another of the chrome structures had flowed into the shape of a flat-screen TV. For a moment she thought he was going to entertain her with an in-flight movie, but it showed only wispy shapes and colours, flashing past at an ever-increasing speed.

"Our journey," said the Doctor, simply.

Kim was starting to worry. "What about the speed of light?" She had read that it would take many years, even at lightspeed, to reach the nearest stars to Earth. "I could die of old age..."

"Speed of light? Pah !"

"I suppose Einstein and all the rest got it all wrong then ?"

"Naw. Spot on actually. It's just..."

" 'There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio'?"

"Good. I like an open mind. Just don't call me Horatio."

Kim sighed at his lame joke. "So how long will it take?"

The Doctor cupped an ear, leaning over, pretending to listen.

The clattering roar that had accompanied their take-off reappeared, this time with a definite descending whine. Kim noticed that the geometric shapes on the walls in this impossible place had stopped changing, locking into a new pattern. They pumped in and out of the wall, in time with the engines.

The room seemed to sway slightly and there was a thump under their feet. The wall-shapes stopped moving. On the scanner the image blurred for a moment, then resolved itself into a busy night sky.

The Doctor reached for his duffle coat. "Still alive then? Haven't aged to death?" he said, winking. He pointed to a switch on the torus.

"Your honour. "

Kim crossed to the controls and threw the indicated switch.

The external door unfolded inwards.

"_Mommy, she's here."_

"_Where is she, sweetie?"_

"_The mezzanine."_

"_Go to her, my darling. Test her for Mommy, there's a good boy. Make sure._"

The Tardis had landed on a large jutting terrace, halfway up a mountain. It stuck out into the night sky like a square, petulant tongue. Where it joined the mountain there was an open archway leading within, dark and deep.

The rich purple sky overhead was positively crammed. Moons of all sizes and colours jostled for position. Clusters of stars filled the gaps in the sky, as dense as smoke. It was undeniably beautiful and unearthly, but somewhat overpowering. As she stood on the amber rock flagstone staring open-mouthed about her, Kim almost felt the need to duck.

The Doctor studied the sky and gave Kim the thumbs up. "Nice one. Good choice."

Cautiously they peered over the low rocky balustrade at the end of the structure. A keening wind tugged at them. Below was a massively deep valley that disappeared into the darkness. Kim had a momentary dizziness and stepped back quickly.

"What do you think?"

"I don't know what to think. Is it always like this?"

"No. But this beats an old quarry any day of the week." The Doctor's brow furrowed. He jumped up and down on the spot a couple of times, reigniting Kim's vertigo. "Why are we not squashed flat?"

"Sorry?"

"The gravity here is earth-normal, give or take. Yet we have a satellite system that would do credit to a massive gas-giant. There must be fifty moons up there."

"Can't we be on a moon ourself?"

He turned delighted eyes on her. "Oh, I like it! Superb thinking. Wrong, but superb! No, we have a bit of a mystery on our hands, Kim."

"There's another little mystery you can answer for me, perhaps?"

She pointed to the Doctors chest where his T-shirt was visible through his open coat. It read 'GLASTONBURY 2035' in stark letters. "Unless I'm going mad that keeps changing."

The Doctor stuck out his chest. "Good, Isn't it? Its laden with unstable molecules. Its on 'slideshow' mode at the moment, although I sometimes suspect it is mood-sensitive as well."

"Did you make it?"

A momentary shadow flitted across the Doctor's face. "No. It was a gift. I promised...her...I would wear it."

Intrigued, Kim was about to ask more but a noise from the archway distracted them.

A file of men shuffled slowly out. About a dozen maybe. Dressed in long dark robes . They were all bald, with hawk-like features. They could have passed for monks back home, perhaps, except for their skin which was uniformly and startlingly white – not caucasian white. Parchment white.

They fanned into a semi circle, facing the Doctor and a startled Kim.

The two groups regarded each other for a moment then the newcomers began a deep, repetitive chant.

At her side the Doctor groaned. "Not chanting monks!" he muttered. "Why is it always chanting monks?"

Kim found her voice. "Why are they chanting that, do you think?"

_SIX...SIX...SIX...SIX...SIX...SIX...SIX..._

"Perhaps they think I'm Patrick McGoohan. No? Just a thought...."

The semi-circle parted and a boy appeared from the archway. He was about the size and shape of a six-year old. The same white skin as the others but with a shock of fine hair that stood proud, as if statically-charged. He was dressed in a maroon wrap.

The boy held up his hand and the chanting snapped off.

His voice, when it came was undeniably juvenile but had a layered-quality that echoed like a twanged harp.

"I am the Childseer. Your coming to this place has been foretold. The traveller from beyond the stars."

"I get a lot of this," murmured the Doctor, out the corner of his mouth. He stepped forward. "Greetings, I am the Doctor..."

The Child pointed past him. "Not you. Her."

.

Inside the Tardis there was movement where there should have been none. The book that had been left on the central torus jittered. It vibrated. It juddered across the surface of the console until it fell onto the floor.

There was a crackle of light and the book flipped open, it's cover scorched. Pages began to flutter and turn as if driven by an unseen wind. Then it reached THE page and rested for a moment, as if exhausted.

Almost imperceptibly, a vapour snaked up from the open page...

.

"Me?" Kim was startled.

"Her?" so was the Doctor.

The boy looked up at Kim. He whispered. "The lonely one....the hesitant voyager...the Gideon."

Kim put her hand up to her mouth.

"You will face the test of the Six."

The Childseer pulled out a small opaque sphere from his sleeve and dashed it to the ground in front of the Doctor and Kim, where it shattered. A liquid pool of quicksilver formed on the flagstone.

"The Gideon will deposit a sample of her fluid in the Seerpool."

"Hold on, " said Kim, wrinkling up her nose. "What's he on about?"

"The face fluid," said the boy, with the merest hint of impatience.

"I think he wants you to spit in it," said the Doctor.

"Well, that's some kind of relief. I thought he meant...never mind. But why should I? What's going on?"

"Excuse me a moment." The Doctor led Kim a few steps backward. "Behind us is a drop of at least a three thousand feet. Chucky and his mates are between us and the Tardis. Our options are somewhat limited. I think it may be prudent to play along."

He stood aside.

Kim stepped forward hesitantly. She made a hash of the first attempt. "Sorry. A bit dry." she said, wiping her mouth. The second effort found its mark.

She stood back as the quicksilver pool began to froth. The child bent forward, dipping his forefinger into the bubbling liquid. His face began to twitch and his eyes glazed over.

The chanting resumed.

_SIX...SIX...SIX...SIX...SIX...SIX...SIX..._

The Doctor pulled out the device from his coat that Kim had first seen back in Thamesford library. He scanned the pool with a faint blue light from the probe.

"Fascinating," observed the Doctor. "It looks like he's doing some kind of DNA test!"

.

_Mommy..._

_Yes, precious? _

_She matches._

_Oh that is wonderful news, my baby. Bring her to me. _

.

The child held up his hand. The chanting stopped.

"You are the Six. You will follow me."

Kim turned fearful eyes on the Doctor.

"W-Where are we going?"

"Mommy wants to see you."

(END OF CHAPTER TWO)


	3. Mommy

PARADIGM – CHAPTER THREE: _MOMMY_

The Tardis control room was no longer empty.

Or was it?

The vapour from the fallen book had assumed a shape. Almost humanoid. But gaseous, diaphanous, barely visible. It was on the verge of dissipation, wavering slightly, like wheat in the breeze.

The Skape could feel it. After all those years of incarceration the effort of escaping from the cursed book had loosened its molecular structure, weakening the chains and blurring the patterns that it needed to remain viable.

Only its hate drove it on. Sheer blind vengeance was its engine.

It was now or never...

The Skape gasped out an emergency biometric scan of the vicinity. It was a weak effort but fortunately it found its mark close to hand. The scan locked onto the book lying open at its feet.

Yes. A pattern....

The Skape activated its emergency energy reserve. It swallowed the pattern hungrily, replenishing its own lost integrity.

Gradually, carefully, the Skape began to solidify, growing skin, blood, hair and bone in an agony of effort.

For a moment it stood blinking in the light, clenching and unclenching its fists. It felt its lungs inflate and its blood pump. It wallowed in the action of the sinews and muscles at its disposal. It took a tentative first step. Oh the pain – the glorious pain!

With a final convulsion, almost a reflex, the Skape's outer dermis rippled. Clothing covered its nakedness, matching the pattern exactly.

The Skape passed a trembling hand over the myriad controls of the torus-shaped console hovering in the centre of the room. Again its faint probe found a match and the Skape threw the indicated switch with some effort.

Pausing only to pick up its erstwhile prison of words, the Skape walked unsteadily towards the open door that had unfolded inwards at its touch.

It was alive – weakened, but alive. It would have its revenge on the Lord of Time.

.

_We are home, Mommy._

_I can see you sweetie._

_What shall you tell them, Mommy?_

_Let's just listen for a while. There's a good boy._

Kim had not known what to expect when they were led into the mountain. A vision had flashed into her head of some Miss Haversham-like crone, sitting in a big chair, surveying all around her imperiously.

The journey was surprisingly short. They were led by the Childseer and half of his Acolytes. Kim and the Doctor were in the middle and the rest of the men brought up the rear. There was no chance of making a break for it. The rocky passage was too narrow.

All Kim could think about was they were getting further and further away from the Tardis.

The passage inclined down suddenly and they emerged into a radiance that momentarily hurt her eyes. It was a massive crystalline cavern, at least the size of a concert hall. The walls were purest white and seemed to almost throb with internal light.

There was no crone- like woman. No throne. In fact the cavern was devoid of anything – except for the display.

That was the only way Kim could describe it. The Display.

It hovered high up in the centre of the place, without support. A line of six huge cubes, glowing amber and almost holographic in nature. Reading from the left the first five cubes were motionless, each displaying a single character, like giant children's building bricks. The characters themselves meant nothing to Kim.

At the end of the line the sixth cube was rotating and tumbling in place, hieroglyphics fflashing across its face in an unending stream. It reminded Kim of the spinning reel of a slot-machine.

The child had moved ahead of them and knelt on the floor, facing the display. The Acolytes fanned out behind the Doctor and Kim, cutting off any chance of escape. They stood motionless.

Kim turned to her companion. "That's the biggest one-armed bandit -" She stopped short at the sight of the Doctor's face.

The colour had drained out of it. He was staring open-mouthed up at the display.

A cold fear gripped at Kim. He looked as though he had been hit by a thunderbolt. She tugged urgently at his sleeve. "Doctor! Doctor! Snap out of it. What's the matter?"

He turned his faraway eyes to her. He shook his head slightly and his eyes refocused.

"Sorry. Bit of a shock." He looked back to the display. "I've never seen anything get this close...."

"What are you talking about? Have you seen it before?"

He nodded, not taking his eyes off the blocks. " Something like it. Back on Earth, actually. A long time ago now. In a school. The Krillitanes tried but got nowhere near. Even the Toymaker could only solve three..."

"What is it ? Some sort of game?"

"It's a code. Incredibly ancient. Nobody knows its origin. It's got many different names...Codex Imperium...The Key to Time...Universalis Omata...Godmaker Prime..."

" The Da Vinci Code ?"

He didn't laugh. "It's most commonly known as 'The Skasis Paradigm'. The answer to everything. And they've cracked five elements!"

Kim looked at the sole rotating cube.

"What happens if they get the sixth?"

"SIX ! "chanted the Acolytes in unison. Violently. Just once.

Kim nearly jumped out of her skin.

"The end of this universe. The power to build a new one. In any image. New natural laws. New science. New everything." The Doctor's voice was steady...almost.

Kim trembled. "Doctor, they called me 'the Six' ".

"I know." The Doctor paced over to the kneeling Childseer. He snapped his fingers in front of those glazed eyes. There was no response. He shook the child by the shoulders. "Where is she? I need to speak to her! Where is your Mommy?"

The crystal walls around them pulsed.

"I am Mommy."

The voice was incredibly deep. It seemed to come at them from all directions and rolled around the cavern like towering surf.

The Doctor let go off the child and stood."My compliments, " he said, loudly. "I am the Doctor-"

"You are the irrelevance."

The Doctor's eyebrows crawled up. "I've been called many things in my time but never that."

"You have knowledge of the Paradigm. That is clear. But it is the Gideon I need. She is the Six."

"SIX !" chanted the Acolytes again.

"I'M NOTHING!" screamed Kim.

"You will complete the Paradigm. This Universe is old. Tired. The time is now. "

"Oh, I see," said the Doctor, snapping his fingers. "You're just another good old megalomaniac who wants everything bowing down before it. Creation in your own image. "

There was a sound like rattling stones in a can. It might have been a chuckle.

"That is not in my program. I am designed to solve the Paradigm, not implement it. It will be the Six who will become the Creatrix Supreme. It has been foretold."

There was a moment of dead silence.

"The Gideon. The God."

(END OF CHAPTER 3)


	4. Smoke & Mirrors

PARADIGM - CHAPTER 4: _SMOKE & MIRRORS_

Kim clutched at the Doctor. He cradled her.

"This is madness," he said, through gritted teeth, over her shoulder to the room at large.

"It is fated. The child has seen it."

"No!" sobbed Kim. "I don't want to. Not me...."

_Mommy._

_Yes, sweetheart?_

_She doesn't understand, does she?_

_No baby. She's confused._

_Shall we explain to them?_

_Let us do that, little one._

The Childseer stood and turned to face the Doctor and Kim. He smashed an orb on the ground in front of them. Fumes from the quicksilver pool drifted up into their faces. Tendrils of smoke teased at their senses. Behind them the Accolytes chanted in numbing unison.

SIX...SIX...SIX...

The Doctor and Kim swayed slightly in time with the chant. Pictures danced in their heads.

_They saw a long lost race. A race that dreamed of God. They had created a machine from the living quartz. Programmed it to solve the Skasis Paradigm by whatever means in its immense power. To roam the Universe and return triumphant. To make them God. _

_They estimated it would take a thousand generations to return. That was a billion years ago. They had long since gone but the machine persisted. Inexorably searching. Roaming free._

_ONE_

_They saw it find the key to the first element. A drop of dew on a frond of summer grass. _

_TWO_

_The second was found aeons later: The dying breath of a Madris Unicorn, its lifeblood ebbing away from a wounded heart._

_THREE_

_The third was hidden deep inside a colony of insects. A single chrysalis among billions buried deep in the birthing chamber of the Queen. _

_But then the well ran dry. The trail had cooled._

_In desperation the machine had sought the legendary world of Skasis itself – the home of the Paradigm. It buried itself here in the mountains, waiting with infernal patience. _

_FOUR_

_Over millenia they saw it attract new moons to the planet, filling the previously empty sky. Then one night, right on time and in accordance with the machine's calculations, the moons aligned in their pre-ordained pattern. The fourth element. _

_FIVE _

_The fifth element needed imagination. The imagination that only children possess. Children in great numbers. They saw the machine suck up the Children of Skasis in its greedy maw. The total childhood population of the planet. Twenty-seven million all told. It created one child – the Childseer. Twenty seven million children in one body – dreaming. The act of its creation was the fifth element._

_They then saw the machine extinguish the remaining population of Skasis, save for the Childseer's twelve Acolytes, who were spared to provide for his material needs and to chant the mantra._

_Try as it might the machine could not find the sixth. It was too well hidden. But the Childseer had found it._

_SIX_

_A random selection of cells and tissue. An unremarkable woman working in a place of books. Hidden in plain sight._

_They saw the same woman standing beneath the sixth cube of the Skasis Paradigm, glowing with power and screaming with joy. They saw the prophecy._

Kim's anguish echoed across the chamber. The pictures faded.

"No !"

"You cannot fight the prophecy," said the child.

The Doctor looked pityingly at the boy. "What you have done here...to the children... is obscene."

The deep voice chuckled. The crystal walls pulsed. "He thinks I'm his Mommy." The voice changed to a simpering, saccharine, falsetto.

"_You can rest soon, my baby."_

"_Thank you, Mommy. I'm very tired."_

"Don't I get a say in all this?" Kim's face was streaked with dried tears, but she still managed to strike a defiant note.

"Of course," rumbled the machine."Yours is the important voice. It is prophesied that you will give yourself to the Paradigm of your free will. That is the vital element. The free will."

"And if I refuse?"

"You saw the outcome yourself. You will complete the circuit. You will take the power. You will become God." The voice lowered. "Do you really think you came here at random ? Drifting on the wind? This is your _destiny_."

That word again.

Kim disentangled herself from the Doctor and looked into his eyes.

"You can't be seriously considering it?" he said.

"Destiny." she whispered. "You used that word, Doctor. But you couldn't see this, could you? What if this is my destiny? If you tell me it's not then I'll believe you. But what if it is..."

The Doctor stared at her for a very long time, then sighed. "I don't know."

Kim found herself chewing at her nails, just as she used to do back home when nervous or afraid.

She looked at the Doctor and the boy and at the pulsating crystalline walls.

"I need time," she said. "To think."

"Kim...!"

"There is a place of contemplation set aside. You can rest. You have already seen the truth but you need to accept it. To embrace it."

"I will take you," said the Childseer.

The boy took her hand. The Doctor made to intervene but was restrained by two of the Acolytes who pinned his arms.

The Childseer led Kim into the passageway, out of the cavern.

The Doctor struggled in vain.

"Now you see your irrelevance revealed," said the deep voice. "I wonder if there will be a place for you in the new order?"

SIX...SIX...SIX...

.

The child led Kim down a branch of the main passage until they came to a small aperture in the wall, just about big enough for one person to pass through.

"You will rest. In here you can hold up a mirror to your soul. See the truth of your feelings." He looked up at her with big, sad eyes. "But when you come to create your new universe, promise me one thing."

"W-what?"

"That there will be no place in it for creatures like me."

He let go of her hand and sat cross-legged, head bowed. Waiting.

The space inside the aperture was bright and roomy. The walls were polished, multi-faceted and angular. A myriad of Kim Gideons reflected back at her. She felt like she was standing inside a prism.

Hold up a mirror to her soul, he had said. She hated mirrors.

_UGLY FAT COW ! The chant of Jimmy Knapp and his gang, back in the school playground. Maybe her universe would get along very nicely without Jimmy Knapp and his like. And mirrors. Yes, a universe without mirrors sounded good. And she could have friends...hundreds of them, thousands of them...no more loneliness...ever...._

Kim gasped. She was actually contemplating it !

God.

Her head pounded. She covered her face with her hands. Trying to block out her anguish and temptation.

She was still in that position when one of the reflections leaped forward and struck her senseless.

(End of Chapter 4)


	5. Paradigm Lost

PARADIGM - CHAPTER FIVE: _PARADIGM LOST_

"She won't do it, you know." The Doctor said, having given up struggling. "No matter what you do. Not of her own free will."

"You sound very sure. Do you know her that well?" said the voice of the crystal wall. " Still, we are about to find out."

Kim and the Childseer walked into the cavern hand in hand.

The Doctor scanned her face anxiously. She looked calm. Collected. Even confident.

"Have you decided?" asked the voice.

Kim nodded. "I accept."

"No!" the Doctor struggled against his captors once more, but they were rock steady.

"Of your own free will?" Did the voice have the merest hint of excitement?

"Of my own free will."

"Then it is settled. Take your place."

She let go of the boy's hand and began to move towards the spinning sixth cube of the display.

"Kim, you can't! The universe is full of good. It's diverse, vibrant. Kim! For God's sake -"

She paused and faced the Doctor. Was that a smirk on her face? "For _my_ sake, you mean."

Kim took her place under the spinning cube. For a moment there was no change, then the tumbling rotation above her head began to slow. She started to glow faintly.

As the horrified Doctor looked on the pressure on his arms suddenly ceased. All the Acolytes in the room collapsed silently into dust, their empty robes littering the room.

"Their work is done," boomed the crystalline voice. "As is mine. Nothing can stop it now. I am as irrelevant as you are. "

The Doctor screamed. A mixture of anger, fear and helpless frustration.

The Childseer fell to his knees in supplication at the centre of the cavern facing Kim, who was bathed in an ever- increasing radiance.

Slower...slower...the sixth cube began to align.

The Doctor backed away, gasping and wide-eyed. Then, incredibly, he heard a voice behind him.

"Doctor?"

He spun like a top and found himself looking at Kim Gideon!

She stood unsteadily at the passage entrance.

"Something knocked me out," she said. "With this I think."

She help up a battered and scorched book. The title was still legible. 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens. Kim's eyes widened as she looked over the Doctor's shoulder. She pointed. "What am I doing over there?"

The Doctor looked at the figure under the slowing sixth cube and then back at the woman in front of him.

"IT'S THE SKAPE!" He violently shoved Kim out into the passageway. "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"

They covered the short distance at full pelt, the Doctor leading the way and Kim doing her best to keep up. Behind them a low hum began. Like telephone wires in the countryside at night. Pulsing, menacing. It seemed to chase them.

They emerged onto the terrace under the crowded sky. Without breaking stride the Doctor ran for the police box. Just as Kim thought he was going to smash into the doors he snapped his fingers and they flew inwards. As she breathlessly crossed the threshold she could see the Doctor well ahead of her, in the centre of the control room, throwing himself onto the control torus.

"Hold On!" he shouted. "Crash Start!"

The engines roared their disapproval and the room tilted at a crazy angle.

.

Back in the cavern the sixth cube had virtually stopped spinning. The figure beneath it, radiant with power, screamed for joy. The prophecy fulfilled.

Then, cocked at an angle to the other five, the sixth cube stuck!

_Mommy._

_Yes, sweetheart?_

_I've been a very silly boy._

_Have you, precious?_

_She isn't the Six, is she?_

_I don't think so, no._

_I'm sorry, Mommy._

_Never mind, dearest. You tried your best._

_Mommy._

_Mm?_

_I can see now what I will become._

_Tell me what you see, my baby. What will you become?_

_Nothing._

The light of an exploding sun consumed The Skape in an instant. It was still wearing an ecstatic look on its borrowed face as it vapourised.

The Childseer's eyes melted and flowed down his cheeks in a grim parody of young tears. Fortunately he felt no pain at all. There simply wasn't time.

In the next instant he was atomized as a terrible inrush of primeval power flooded the chamber. In fact atomized is not the right word. Not even his atoms survived. He became nothing, as he had foreseen.

And in the instant after that, the planet Skasis exploded.

.

From the blessed peace of the Tardis control room the Doctor and Kim watched the scanner in silence as a new cloud of interstellar gas and dust formed.

"The Skasis Nebula," murmured the Doctor. "It's got a nice ring to it."

"What happened?"

"It was like putting the wrong key in a lock. The Paradigm activated a fail-safe. It took the whole planet and all those moons up with it."

"But that thing looked just like me. Back there in the cave."

"It wasn't you though. It was just a petty shape-changer on the look out for the main chance. It must have thought it had hit the jackpot. 'The Universe of the Skape.' Not an agreeable prospect. " The Doctor held up the book and tutted. "I obviously didn't do such a good job sealing this as I thought."

"Thank goodness ," said Kim with feeling. She fidgeted and started biting her nails.

"You OK?"

She looked up. "Am I real?"

"Pardon?"

"That thing talked about me as if I was just some part in a jigsaw. Am I really normal? Or am I...well...artificial?" She chewed at her fingernails again.

"One hundred percent human stock. A child of Earth. The fact that the final element of the code matched yours was just pure chance."

Kim pondered. "Are you telling me that it was all a coincidence? You finding me, bringing me here at random? What are the odds?"

The Doctor pursed his lips. "Astronomical," he admitted. "But I deal in the astronomical. In the absence of any other evidence its the only explanation I can offer." A smile played at the corners of his mouth."But there again, 'There's more to Heaven and Earth, Horatio...'"

Kim smiled weakly. "Don't call me Horatio."

The Doctor looked back at the scanner. "I wonder if we really owe a debt to the Children of Skasis?"

Kim raised her eyebrows.

"That boy led the real Kim Gideon out of the room and came back with the Skape. With his enhanced powers he should have known."

"Perhaps he did."

The Doctor shrugged.

"What happens next?" Kim was desperately tired.

The Doctor looked serious. "That depends on a question I want to ask. Take your time and think carefully about your answer."

Kim's senses were suddenly on full alert, her fatigue dropping away.

"Kim. If the Skape hadn't taken your place, what would your answer have been?"

There was a long silence. Kim felt that her future pivoted on this. What did he want her to say? He was testing her, she was sure of it. Then, remarkably, she heard the voice of her long-dead mother, offering her advice on the morning Kim went for her job interview at the library. "Don't try to second-guess them. You can't. Just tell the truth."

"I was tempted." said Kim, in a very small voice.

Would that be enough for the Doctor to throw her off the ship? Take her home? She scanned his face, fearing the worst.

He puffed out his cheeks and seemed relieved. "When the Krillitanes offered me something similar, I was tempted as well. Thank you for being truthful with me, Kim. We're going to need trust if we're to travel together."

_Travel together !_

The Doctor threw his duffle-coat carelessly onto the console. "Now then. We'd better get you a room sorted out. And I'll try and find us somewhere less frantic for our next trip. No God-making machines, megalomaniac chunks of crystal and, above all, no chanting monks!"

"Doctor."

"Mm?"

"Before we do that I was wondering..."

"Go on."

"There's something I'd like to do first, if I can."

He looked up from the controls. "Tell me."

So she did.

PARADIGM – _EPILOGUE_

The streets of Hammersmith had an October sheen as the drizzle intensified under the darkening sky.

The man sat with his back against a wall, shivering under a matted tartan blanket. He was dirty, unshaven and smelled bad. Water dripped off his nose. At his side was an empty beer-bottle. At his feet an old woollen hat containing eighteen pence and a sealed condom, the latter having been deposited by a passing group of sneering youths.

He couldn't do this anymore. Not another night, like the God-knows how many that had gone before. His mind turned to the bridge just ten minutes away and the cold, deep Thames...

Two pairs of legs entered his eyeline. They didn't scurry on.

"Are you Jimmy Knapp?" A woman's voice.

He looked up. A bloke in a duffle-coat with the hood up and a middle aged woman with an umbrella. Social workers? Not more bloody social workers!

"I'm Jim Knapp. Nobody's called me Jimmy since I was a kid."

Something dropped into his hat. He frowned. A bunch of keys. What the...?

"Listen to me. Those are the keys to my house," said the woman. "Its nothing special but it'll be a roof over your head. I'm going away for a -"she looked uncertainly at duffle-coat man, "- while?"

"A while," confirmed her companion.

She pressed a note into Jim's hand. "That's the address. It's only ten minutes from here. You can borrow it. Until you get back on your feet."

They turned to go.

Jim was astonished. "Why are you doing this?"

The woman paused, looking down at him. "Let's just say that ever since I was a little girl there's been a big weight on my shoulders. It feels a lot lighter now."

The couple walked away into the night.

THE END


End file.
